In a communication network system, to prevent a user terminal, which has no data to transmit, from needlessly occupying a network resource, a mechanism called a “dormancy timer” is introduced. By using this mechanism, whenever a user terminal establishes a connection with a network side equipment, the system establishes a timer for the user terminal, and this timer is called the “dormancy timer”. When the user terminal no longer has data to transmit, the dormancy timer starts to count time. If the user terminal has no data to transmit before the dormancy timer expires at a time threshold, the system actively releases the connection with the user terminal and reclaims the occupied resource, thus improving a cyclic utilization rate of limited resources in the system. If the user terminal begins to transmit data before the dormancy timer expires, the dormancy timer is reset and restarted after the user terminal stops to transmit data again.
In the communication network system, if the time threshold of the dormancy timer is set too low, that is, the dormancy timer expires after a short time, although the network resources of the system may be saved, instances of unnecessary removal or establishment of air interface connections may increase, generating an extra load on a signaling processing unit. Frequent removals or establishments of the connections to the user terminal may negatively impact user experience. On the other hand, if the time threshold of the dormancy timer is set too high, limited network resources are unnecessarily occupied by connected user terminals for too long, so that the system cannot reclaim these resources in time. Newly accessing user terminals cannot be allocated with the resources soon enough to establish connections, resulting in a reduced capacity of the system.